


King of Epirus

by lastdream



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Hurt No Comfort, Implied Relationships, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Tony-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-08 18:01:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6867709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastdream/pseuds/lastdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Accords are in place and Zemo is behind bars; the dissenting heroes have been defeated and disappeared. To all appearances, Tony Stark has won.</p>
            </blockquote>





	King of Epirus

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry, I guess? I'm not actually that sorry :P I've always kind of wanted to add to the "Not A Fix-It" tag, so there's that.
> 
> Heed the warnings!

“Did you know?” Tony asks Steve when Steve pulls him back, away from the Winter Soldier. He is desperate and his insides are roiling in agony, but he holds himself in check, does his best to contain everything he’s feeling inside his armor. His control is like a thread of old cobweb, once stronger than steel but now half-degraded, ready to fall to dust at the lightest touch. His eyes feel wet and hard, but he refuses to look away from Steve.

 

“No,” Steve says. “Tony, I’m so sorry. I had no idea your parents were murdered.”

 

Tony doesn’t know what to say; he just sags in his armor, leaning towards Steve. He needs Steve to hold him up, to hold his breaking heart together until he can figure out how to get the anger under control again. Steve is still talking, and his eyes look wet too. His shield is still faced towards Zemo, but he reaches his free hand towards Tony, rests it on the shoulder of his armor, thumb brushing softly against the unsteady pulse in Tony’s neck. It feels like the only real thing in the world.

 

“I didn’t know, but I’ll help you make it right. There are still Hydra cells out there, Hydra bases like this one; you and I can find them, and take them out together. They’ve taken so much from both of us,” Steve says, and his eyes are full of all his grief for the time that was taken from him, and all the people he lost.

 

“They took everything from me,” the Winter Soldier says from behind Tony. Tony turns to him, and the sight of that arm makes him burn up inside, but the Soldier drops his gun, and he asks, “What do you need from me?”

 

“Do you even remember?” Tony asks automatically, with cold fury.

 

“I remember all of them,” the Soldier replies.

 

“It’s not his fault, Hydra had control of his mind!” Steve exclaims, defending his friend. Tony’s insides twist up a little further, frozen between feelings.

 

“That’s true,” the Soldier agrees, talking to Steve, “but I did it.”

 

He holds his metal arm out to Tony, not harsh and threatening, but relaxed, as far as that metal limb can relax, like an offering.

 

“You killed my mom,” Tony says.

 

“I did,” says the Soldier.

 

Tony takes a step towards him, charging the repulsor in his right gauntlet. It whines as it floods with power and Steve cries out a warning behind him, but Tony doesn’t listen. He rests his gauntlet on the Winter Soldier’s metal shoulder, watches the man’s body tense under the grip even as the look in his eyes changes. He looks _relieved_ at the prospect of death; that’s all Tony needs to know. He fires.

 

The repulsor blast is powerful, shearing through protective plates and wiring and servos with a smell of burning metal. The Winter Soldier screams as the metal arm tears away from his body at the shoulder, breaking away from its connections to his nervous system, and he falls to his knees on the floor, one-armed.

 

“Thank you,” Bucky Barnes says.

 

*

 

Tony breaks out of the lifelike hologram with a bitter cry, pressing a hand to his mouth to hold back the rest that want to follow. It might even be true, he thinks. Maybe, if Steve hadn’t known the truth about that night, Tony would’ve been able to leash his anger, to take it out only on the person who deserved it. Or maybe he wouldn't have. The reimagined memory won't slot into place the way it's supposed to, so maybe it would have gone the same way regardless.

 

But that fight was over and done, and Tony would never know for sure how it could have gone. Sometimes, winning and losing are indistinguishable.

 

"Boss, you've been at that too long," Friday interrupts. "The strain the device puts on your autonomic nervous system—"

 

"Enough," Tony says, and he mutes her. He makes himself remember what had worked and what hadn’t, the first time he’d used this technology. He hadn’t been able to change Howard very much, not without compromising the results of the attempt. When he tried, the scenario became more pleasant, undoubtedly, but it also felt wrong, incongruous. It didn’t take.

 

The one time he had forced the words _I’m proud of you_ to pass Howard’s lips, the memory had jarred so badly with the existing one that Tony had been sick all over the carpet.

 

Maybe Tony's trying too hard to make what happened  _good_. Maybe, if he lets it hurt just a little more this time, it'll work like it's supposed to. He'll be able to break out of this excruciating cycle and heal.

 

Tony takes two more painkillers to stave off the electromagnetic headache, and allows the hologram to form up around him again.

 

*

 

“Did you know?” Tony asks again.

 

Steve’s eyes are veiled, like he’s hiding what he really feels behind a mask.

 

“No,” Steve says, but Tony has always been good at seeing through masks. He knows a lie when he sees one. A lack of transparency might slip past him when he doesn’t even know to be looking for it, but a straight up boldfaced lie to his face? That, he spots immediately.

 

Tony sees red, realizing all at once that not only has Steve been lying to him— _how long_ , God, Steve might’ve known for _years_ —but Steve is still lying to him, even now, even here, in a Godforsaken bunker in the middle of Siberia where no one but Tony can ever call him on his lie. It’s Tony, it’s all Tony, not some kind of general deception to protect his broken friend; this, here, in this moment, this lie is only meant for Tony.

 

It feels like the armor works itself under Tony’s skin, turning vein and muscle and bone to steel, and he backhands Steve across the room.

 

“You knew!” he screams, firing up the boot jets to follow the arc of Steve’s trajectory. Tony lands heavily and seizes Steve as he tries to scramble up from the floor, holding him tight around the biceps to keep him from hitting back. “You lied to me about everything!”

 

Tony can hear the Winter Soldier charging up behind him to defend his friend, and Tony disengages one hand to fire at him. He uses the power of the full suit to amp the sonic pulse up to double strength, and it’s enough to put the Soldier on the ground. There’s a clang as his metal arm hits the floor, but Tony doesn’t even look at him. Steve tries to take a swing at him, to surge up out of his grip, but Tony puts his hands back on Steve’s shoulders and slams him into the ground, hard enough to keep him there for a moment.

 

“I didn’t lie to you,” Steve says very reasonably.

 

“It’s a lie of omission, it still counts,” Tony snaps back, and he hates to hear the rough, broken edge of his own voice.

 

“It’s not a lie. I didn’t know for sure that it was him until the video confirmed it,” Steve insists, and now he’s not even really fighting back. His hands are wrapped around the metal wrists of the armor, just tight enough that Tony can feel that they’re there.

 

“But you knew it was _someone_ ,” Tony says. “You knew my parents didn’t just die in a _tragic accident,”_ he spits, “and you never told me! You didn’t think I had a right to know that my own Goddamn parents were assassinated?”

 

“It would have upset you,” Steve points out, and Tony snaps. He punches Steve right in the face, hard enough that his head snaps back onto the concrete floor. He’s a damn supersoldier, Tony thinks callously. He can handle a little pain.

 

“I spent _six hundred and eleven million dollars_ getting over their accident,” he says venomously. “I can make it an even billion getting over their murder. Or I can take up another destructive therapeutic hobby. Or I could hire an actual therapist. I’m _spoiled for choice_ , here, actually. Except that I’m not, since you decided _for me_ that I was going to walk around ignorant until someone else shoved snuff footage in my face, because oddly enough it never occurred to me to look through Hydra's ancient high-encryption files for records of a car _accident_!”

 

Steve doesn’t say anything, but Tony isn’t stopping. He’s furious, murderously angry and wretchedly hurt, and the words don’t stop coming.

 

“You didn’t trust me to handle my own feelings, you didn’t trust me to believe you about the evil fake doctor over there, and you didn’t trust me to call off the fight if you just _explained to me_ why you were really running!” Tony breaks off to heave in rapid breaths, snatching at shreds of control. He can hear the whine of his repulsors charging on Steve’s chest in response to involuntary commands. “Steve,” he says, and his voice breaks. It becomes very small and very frightened, the child still hiding inside him who once hid from a wine-soaked father. “Did you _ever_ trust me? Did you ever really care about me?”

 

The veil goes up in Steve’s eyes again.

 

“Yes,” he says, and something in Tony breaks irretrievably. He fires.

 

*

 

Tony comes out of the holographic scenario panting and clutching at his frantic heart, eyes blurry and face wet with tears he hadn’t felt falling. He collapses back against the wall and draws his knees up to his chest to try to stave off the burning in his lungs. It doesn’t help; the movement just reminds him of the sick feeling rising in his stomach, and he grits his teeth to keep from dry heaving.

 

There really was murder inside him when he fought them. He hadn’t been sure, afterwards, but now that truth is inescapable. He hadn’t killed Steve, but if anything at all had pushed him just a little further… God, he  _loved_ Steve and he could have done anything. Maybe he's not so different from Howard after all.

 

Tony sits and cries and watches his hands shake in front of him until he thinks he’s strong enough to try the scenario again.

 

It takes a long time.

 

Everything he's tried has only made the situation worse. Maybe this time around, Tony thinks, if he allows Steve to answer  _yes_ instead of _no,_ like he did in the original memory, Tony will be able to change things, to make it better. He runs the scenario.

 

*

 

“Did you know?” Tony asks. His heart is fluttering like a hummingbird with anger and fear as he leaves it in Steve's hands, to keep or crush as he chooses. He can only watch and wait on tenterhooks, hoping against hope that the all-too-fragile organ will survive.

 

Steve hesitates, a tiny fluctuation in the system. Tony’s own indecision. He steels himself.

 

“Yes,” Steve breathes, and Tony's heart twists and shatters out of rhythm. The anger rises in him so fast that it overflows before he can control it, and his backhand throws Steve wide.

 

Tony means to focus on Steve, he really does; the pain of his betrayal is ripping Tony open inside, leaving him bare and vulnerable and exposed. Steve is the one he wants to make _hurt_ for how he’s hurting Tony.

 

But then his eye falls on the screen, still plainly showing the Winter Soldier’s bare hand choking the life out of Maria Stark, and Tony just can’t hold back anymore. The Soldier killed his mom.

 

He fights the Winter Soldier with everything he has in him, and Steve too when he gets in the way. There’s too much in his head to understand, grief and betrayal and revenge, and trying to direct all that emotion feels risky, like trying to fly a nuclear bomb all over again. Friday has overridden the mute and is shouting warnings, but Tony doesn’t listen, fighting like a feral thing.

 

The roil of emotion in Tony’s chest builds and builds until it quite literally explodes, unibeam ripping right through the Winter Soldier’s metal arm and throwing him to the floor.

 

All at once, Tony feels an odd, depressed calm overtake him. Like catharsis, maybe. Bucky Barnes is still breathing on the floor despite Tony’s murderous intentions a few seconds ago, but he doesn’t feel much urge to finish the job. A single repulsor blast would do it, now, and Bucky will be defenseless for a few more seconds yet, but—well, Tony doesn’t really _want_ to. It feels like he’s already accomplished what he needed to do.

 

Some part of his mind, lodged in the real world and distanced from the scenario, understands that he’s come to identify the _arm_ with the entire Winter Soldier.

 

Steve attacks in retaliation, and Tony responds dispassionately. The hurt of betrayal seems to have leaked out of him along with all the other excised feelings. Now, he looks into the face of Steve’s wild vengeance, and he just feels cold and lost. Steve doesn't care about him anymore, if he ever did. He feels more like crying than fighting. He could analyze Steve’s fight pattern, but… honestly, he doesn’t care enough anymore. Steve is fighting to kill, Tony can see it in his rage-blind eyes, and Tony thinks it might be easier just to let him. Some would say that he’d get to see his parents afterward; maybe this is the way to heal that grief.

 

Steve punches him in the face, hard enough to feel through armor, and Tony remembers the feeling of his mother’s last kiss on his cheek. A melody drifts through his head.

 

 _Try to remember_ …

 

But he can’t remember, not really. He feels, distantly, a little lightheaded. There's pain in his chest. The anger that had given him strength to fight is beyond his reach, even when Steve throws him to the floor and climbs on top of him, bringing his shield down again and again on Tony’s faceplate. The whole thing shatters at once, and then Tony’s face is bared to the freezing air of the bunker, and he can see Steve’s intent with clear eyes.

 

Some latent survival instinct is strong enough to bring his hands up to defend himself, but he isn’t fast enough.

 

Steve brings the shield down one last time, and Tony feels a crushing, cutting pain. His heart seizes behind his ribs.

 

Everything goes dark.

 

*

 

They find him almost immediately. Friday makes sure of it. She guides them to the room where Tony Stark is collapsed on the floor, and watches as they cry out in shock at the still, cold shape of his body. She watches them calling the ambulance, frantic with loss as they try to force his overclocked heart to start beating again.

 

She watches them carry his body away.

 

Friday follows them through the security cameras, and knows that their efforts will be futile. She does not tell them so; she can see that they are clinging to their hope.

 

She knows what it is to hang on her last thread like that. She and Tony had done it together, reading the measures that would be taken against the so-called rogue Avengers and praying that Steve would come home before it came to that. Praying, on her own, that Steve would come back and mend her boss's broken heart. But it's too late for that.

 

There's nothing anyone can do for Tony Stark's heart anymore.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Tag suggestions and feedback are always appreciated :D
> 
> However:
> 
> Feelings expressed by characters are not necessarily my own, or even necessarily their own. In other words, please, please, please nobody try to start a fight with me over Civil War, I am so not here for that.


End file.
